Women, feminism, and geek culture

GF classifieds (July to September 2012)

This is another round of Geek feminism classifieds. If you’re looking to hire women, find some people to participate in your study, find female speakers, or just want some like-minded folk to join your open source project, this is the thread for you!

Here’s how it works:

Geeky subjects only. We take a wide view of geekdom, but if your thing isn’t related to an obviously geeky topic, you’ll probably want to give a bit of background on why the readers of Geek Feminism would be interested.

Explain what you’re looking for. Even if it’s not a job ad, think of it like one: what is the activity/role in question, and what would it involve? What is the profile of people you’re looking for?

GF has international readership, so please be sure to indicate the location if you’re advertising a job position, conference, or other thing where the location matters. Remember that city acronyms aren’t always known world-wide and lots of cities share names, so be as clear as possible! (That is, don’t say “SF[O]” or “NYC” or “Melb”, say “San Francisco, USA”, “New York City, USA” or “Melbourne, Australia”.) And if you can provide travel/relocation assistance, we’d love to know about it.

Keep it legal. Most jurisdictions do not allow you to (eg.) advertise jobs for only people of a given gender. So don’t do that. If you are advertising for something that falls into this category, think of this as an opportunity to boost the signal to women who might be interested.

Provide a way for people to contact you, such as your email address or a link to apply in the case of job advertisements. (The email addresses entered in the comment form here are not public, so readers won’t see them.)

Keep an eye on comments here, in case people ask for clarification or more details. (You can subscribe to comments via email or RSS.

If you’d like some more background/tips on how to reach out to women for your project/event/whatever, take a look at Recruiting women on the Geek Feminism Wiki.)

Is there any way to ensure that people or organizations seeking “women” are okay with people who define themselves as women but were not assigned female at birth? Or is that issue considered outside the scope of Geek Feminism?

Trans-inclusiveness is inside the scope of Geek Feminism. But could you clarify what you mean?

Do you mean that the post should ask people to specify trans-inclusivity? We could do that. What wording would you suggest for that?

Or, do you mean that you would like us to go through a verification process with commenters by, eg, backchannel discussion with them about their trans-inclusiveness? That is also in the scope, but less likely to happen due to available volunteer time. (If a volunteer becomes available to audit trans-inclusiveness, then that of course is different.)

Maybe remind everyone that if they want to include trans women they might want to say they do, and not take it for granted that we take our acceptance for granted. We don’t. At the very least, I don’t.

I’m looking for help in encouraging school-aged girls interested in computing to take part in an online course and learn to program.

The NCSS Challenge is a 5 week programming competition that teaches school students (years 5 – 12) how to program as they go along. No previous programming experience is required, and three different streams are offered: beginners, intermediate and advanced, each designed to encourage, inspire and challenge participants.

Last year, we had over 2000 Australian students participate, 292 of whom were girls, making just 14%, up from the previous year’s 9.5%. This year we’re also accepting international students and, ideally, whole school classes (though the site still seems rather Australia-focused). If any of you know of any high school girls who might be interested in learning how to program, please, have a chat to them and encourage them to sign up!

I will also note here that participation in the Challenge costs $20 AU – to cover our expenses (e.g. computing power required to run the 100,000+ code submissions received last year) and also we’ve found that students tend take the program more seriously when they pay a nominal fee for it ($4/week for 5 weeks).

Why encourage them to do the Challenge, and not Codecademy? – The best answer is to do both! The big difference with the Challenge, though, is that it’s one focused 5 week period where students interested in computers and programming come together to learn. The (moderated) forums are abuzz with programming and geekery, and there is an army of volunteer tutors (university students) answering questions. For girls, this especially is a great opportunity. Girls who may have thought of themselves as an exception to the rule for being interested in computing suddenly find themselves in a supportive, engaging, and positive environment full of hundreds of other high school girls who are learning to code, and this will only continue to improve as more girls take part.

The Wikimedia Foundation is hiring for several positions in several departments, and aims for Pluralism, internationalism, and diversity in its hiring. Open positions that I am specifically hiring for and which are good for people with technical backgrounds who also like teaching or leading people: Volunteer QA Coordinator, Engineering Outreach Coordinator, and Bug Wrangler. I’d prefer to hire people who can work in the office in San Francisco, California, USA, but I personally work remotely and am open to remote applicants.

I’m co-editing an anthology on open source software performance called The Performance of Open Source Applications. This will be the third book in a series after The Architecture of Open Source Applications, which was edited by Amy Brown and Greg Wilson.

We’re looking for authors for the new book. You can find more information here and if you have an open source application you would like to write about, send us an email at:

OpenGeo, the world leader in enterprise-level open source geospatial software, is looking for more fiercely intelligent and tenacious people to help us expand the reach of our open source geospatial solutions.We employ many of the leaders in the field and we offer enviably interesting and challenging working environments (NYC, DC, VIC,BC – oh my!) with some of the most sparklingly brilliant human beings around — all of us putting our heads together to build, promote, support, and sell the solutions that challenge the status quo and help tackle some of the most pressing problems the world over.

These roles will all very substantially contribute to the Berkman Center’s mission to build out into cyberspace, and will afford the staffers the opportunity to develop free and open source software and work on challenging issues with brilliant and fun-loving collaborators.

If you have questions about these technical roles, please do not hesitate to be in touch, and please note that applications must be submitted through the Harvard Law School HR site. As well, please share along with candidates who you think might fit the bill!

All best,
Becca

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Senior Web Developer

Duties & Responsibilities

The Berkman Center seeks an enthusiastic web applications developer with strong people skills. The successful candidate will develop web-based applications from the database to the UI. The position will also provide project management support for some application development projects and mentor (in an advisory and support role) junior developers. Position expected to interface directly with clients, working with them to refine vision and scope of projects. The developer will need to keep current with tools and technologies of open source software development and database architecture and will release much of their work under FOSS licenses.

Working with great in-house talent, position is ideal for someone who learns enjoys tinkering/solving a range of dynamic technology problems and is comfortable in a fun, dynamic and fast-moving environment. Candidate should have good customer service and communication skills; be adept at working with both non-technical and technical people; able to take initiative and follow through with minimal supervision; be patient, curious, and perseverant; be flexible and be able to prioritize and to manage multiple needs; works well as part of a team and independently.

Reports to Technology Director. As with all Berkman Center positions, this is a term appointment funded through June 30, 2013; with strong potential for continuation based on funding and institutional need.

Basic Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree required. 6+ years of web application development experience including 4+ years work experience with Ruby and PHP using MVC development frameworks (ROR, Symfony, CodeIgniter). Full life cycle development experience (technical design through implementation) required.

Additional Qualifications – please note that this section lists a set of desired technical skills. We do not expect the ideal candidate to come into the job possessing them all, but we do expect her or him to be a quick and motivated learner. We’re flexible for the right candidate.

Excellent communication and technical skills; demonstrated ability to take appropriate initiative and drive the development process; demonstrated project planning and time management skills; ability to work independently, assume leadership roles and work as part of a team. Code samples will be required.

Candidate would thrive in dynamic, entrepreneurial, self-motivated environment. Ability to work under tight deadlines crucial. Must be a team player, able to work alone and in teams.

Additional Information

Organization: The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is a research program founded to explore cyberspace, share in its study, and help pioneer its development. Founded in 1997, through a generous gift from Jack N. and Lillian R. Berkman, the Center is home to an ever-growing community of faculty, fellows, staff, and affiliates working on projects that span the broad range of intersections between cyberspace, technology, and society. More information can be found at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu.

Commitment to Diversity: The work and well-being of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University are strengthened profoundly by the diversity of our network and our differences in background, culture, experience, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, and much more. We actively seek and welcome applications from people of color, women, the LGBTQ community, persons with disabilities and all other diverse candidates, as well as applications from researchers and practitioners from across the spectrum of disciplines and methods.